Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Is China going back to the 'era of name-calling'?

“I solemnly declare that here comes a name-calling era, and we would curse the enemy softly to death.”

So wrote Ai Weiwei, the Chinese activist-artist who was arrested more than two months ago and remains in detention while the Chinese police investigate his alleged “economic crimes”.

Those words, written in June 2009, suddenly came back to me this morning when I read the story of the blogger in Chongqing who received one year’s “re-education through labour” sentence for insulting the city’s flamboyant Communist Party boss, Bo Xilai, in a blog posting.

The Financial Times noted that the story of 45-year-old Fang Hong, illustrated the “dire consequences” of mocking Mr Bo, who has made waves these past two years “cleaning up” Chongqing’s mafia gangs and promoting a nostalgic revival of “Red” culture.

It’s easy to mock the old Maoist claptrap, but as Mr Bo himself has said, the values of sacrifice, community and revolutionary spirit do resonate in the hearts of some Chinese who fear a society without values.

Of course there was another, darker side to all that revolutionary zeal which is still around today. Usually with soft edges – Hu Jintao, China’s president, talks in Orwellian terms of “social management” and a “harmonious society” – but as this episode suggests, with hard edges too, if need be.

Mr Bo is being widely tipped as a future member of the all-powerful 9-member politburo Standing Committee when it is renewed next year – possibly even a replacement for Zhou Yongkang, the security boss.

Xi Jinping – the man expected to succeed Hu Jintao as President and Party boss – is also widely perceived to have backed Mr Bo after visiting Chongqing last December and having warmest words for his fellow princeling’s Mao revival project.

“These activities have gone deeply into the hearts of the people and are worthy of praise,” Mr Xi said.

The world must hope that Ai Weiwei is wrong, and that China is not returning to “an era of name calling".